This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Down in adoration falling, Lo! the sacred Host we hail; Lo! o'er ancient forms departing, Newer rites of grace prevail; Faith for all defects supplying, Where the feeble senses fail.
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
At the end of my life, with just one breath left, if you come, I’ll sit up and sing.
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
There was a dawn I remember when my soul heard something from your soul. I drank water from your spring and felt the current take me in.
Spirit |
Ruth Benedict, born Ruth Fulton
The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural.
Fulfillment | Study | Learn |
Every day, a framed poster of a mountain climber given to me by my daughter Trudy reminds me to ‘climb with care and confidence.’ I wholeheartedly believe in this philosophy, which is why in all my years in the restaurant business, I have never tried to overextend. I’m satisfied stepping from one plateau to the next, making sure we’re doing everything right before moving on. That way of thinking has allowed us to grow steadily into a 1.5 billion-dollar business with more than 1,200 restaurants, while responding to the needs of people around us. I know the best way to grow our business is to climb with care and confidence.
Children | Desire | Discipline | Life | Life | Marriage | Will | Child | Think |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
I probably felt more resentment for what I personally was to suffer than for the wrong they were doing to anyone and everyone. But at that time I was determined not to put up with badly behaved people more out of my own interest than because I wanted them to become good people.
Beauty | Eternal | Life | Life | Love | Mystery | Sound | Time | Will | Beauty |
Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.
Freedom | Literature |
Salvador de Madariaga, fully Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo
The three creative prototypes, the scientist, the artist, and the saint, know instinctively, without the help of any mere philosopher, that each must obey an absolute rule of conduct. Three words established and hallowed by usage express the divinities, the values, the supreme aims served respectively by these three kinds of men with an undivided loyalty: truth for the scientist; beauty for the artist; goodness for the saint. The discussion on what these words mean will never end. We must be content with taking note of their clarity as symbols, and of the singular force which animates them and makes of them powerful poles of attraction.
Freedom |
The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.
The most perfect humour and irony is generally quite unconscious.
It is a fact that the employing class . . . endeavor to get the greatest amount of labor for the smallest wages for which they can get employes. On the other hand, the workers have always endeavored to get the greatest amount of money for the smallest amount of work. Under these conditions it is impossible for capitalists and laborers to have common interests. To preach otherwise [is] an unpalatable truth, or to cry peace when there is none, is like the ostrich, who hides his head in the sand.
Battle | Free press | People | Right |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls.
Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
Is it not? Is it not? Breadth of view, my dear Mr. Mac, is one of the essentials of our profession. The interplay of ideas and the oblique uses of knowledge are often of extraordinary interest.
Man | Mathematics |
My visceral perception of brotherhood harmonizes with our best modern biological knowledge. […] Many people think (or fear) that equality of human races represents a hope of liberal sentimentality probably squashed by the hard realities of history. They are wrong. This essay can be summarized in a single phrase, a motto if you will: Human equality is a contingent fact of history. Equality is not true by definition; it is neither an ethical principle (though equal treatment may be) nor a statement about norms of social action. It just worked out that way. A hundred different and plausible scenarios for human history would have yielded other results (and moral dilemmas of enormous magnitude). They didn't happen.
Dedication | Good | Ideas | Judgment | Opinion | Power | Practice | Worry | Guilty | Think |
As a word, ecology has been so debased by recent political usage that many people employ it to identify anything good that happens far from cities and without human interference.
Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free.
Evidence | God | Uncertainty | Universe | God |
What shakes the eye but the invisible? Running from God's the longest race of all.